Joaquin’s gun, but according to my mother they’re on jumpers like white on rice.”
The door to the gondola doors hissed closed and, with the slightest of jerks, the car picked up its pace once again. Finn took his first deep breath since this business began and slowly expelled it. Finally having a second that didn’t feel fraught with danger, he shrugged on his pack and adjusted its straps.
Then he turned his attention on the blonde. The girl had soft, seriously pretty lips, great skin and a slight dent in her chin, but right at this moment he couldn’t summon up a good goddamn about any of that. Instead he looked her dead in her pretty blue eyes.
And snapped, “Who are you, lady? And what the fuck is going on here?”
MAGS’S ADRENALINE SPIKE hit the skids and she sagged against the wall of the gondola, small tremors quaking every muscle in her body. She stared at the man who had come to her rescue.
“I’m Mags Deluca,” she said in response to his question. “Thanks for the intervention.” She didn’t know anyone else who would have stepped in to help her the way he had and that fact had her chin lifting in pure reflex. “Not that I couldn’t have taken care of the matter myself.” Maybe.
“Yeah, I could see how well that was working for you.”
Tempted as she was to dig in and keep defending her not particularly defensible position, honesty compelled her to admit, “Not many people would’ve involved themselves in a stranger’s problems, especially when it meant going up against a guy bristling with guns and knives.”
He hitched a broad shoulder. “I have three sisters, a mom, two grandmothers and a boatload of aunts and girl cousins,” he said. “It’s been drilled into me from birth to involve myself if I see a chick in trouble.” His voice hardened. “But I’d like to know what the hell I just got myself into.”
“Ohmigawd,” she breathed in awe, totally diverted. “You have three sisters?”
“And three brothers.” He gave her a level look. “Which doesn’t answer my question.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” she said and, with the wave of her hand, knocked away the envy that surged at the thought of having not just one sibling you could call your own, which would be awesome enough, but six of them. Just the idea had made her forget for a moment how shaky her grasp on her courage was, but meeting his hard-eyed will-you-get-to-the-point stare, she shoved the distraction aside and wrestled herself back on track.
“My parents are missionaries,” she said and brought him up-to-date on the noise her mother had been making about the Munoz cartel’s recruitment of teens and the abrupt silence following Nancy’s letters.
When she fell silent, Finn said, “People still write letters? It’s the twenty-first century—I thought everyone and their brother emailed.”
“That’s your big takeaway from what I just told you? That my mother doesn’t email?” You would’ve thought she’d said Nancy sent telegraphs, and she gave her shoulder an infinitesimal hitch. “My folks have spent their entire adult lives ministering to the poor. And while there likely are computers and internet available even in the most poverty-stricken barrios, my mother would consider the time it took to learn to use them a frivolous waste when she can just as easily grab a sheet of paper and slap a stamp on an envelope.” Then she waved the interruption away and explained how, when she’d arrived at her parents’ apartment this afternoon, she’d been told they’d returned to the States.
“But when Joaquin had me against the wall, he said Victor Munoz wanted to talk to me. He’s the cartel leader.” Was that right? Suddenly it seemed supremely important that she have the correct terminology. “Or don or whatever you call the head guy who runs a cartel.”
Unlike her, he stuck to the point. “Try to stay on track here. Why did he want to talk to you?”
Another stray thought popped into her head and she blurted, “I don’t know your name.”
“What?” But he blinked dense, inky lashes over those dark eyes and shook his head as if to negate the question. “It’s Finn. Finn Kavanagh.”
Good name. But this time she knew better than to get sidetracked. “Unfortunately, Finn Kavanagh, he refused to answer that very question. He just kept saying I’d find out from Senor Munoz himself. But Joaquin’s clearly not the brightest bulb in the tanning bed because even as he was detailing all the dire things that could happen to me if I didn’t come quietly, he let slip that my parents are being held on the Munoz grow farm.”
“And your first reaction was to let him know you’d caught that?” He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe anyone could have such a blonde moment.
“Hey!” Indignant, she shoved away from the gondola wall. “Excuse the heck out of me if I was rattled. I was already reeling from learning my parents had gone back to the States without saying word one to me about it. And then he tells me they’re being held prisoner by a drug lord? Hah!” She pointed at him. “That’s the job description I was looking for.” She promptly shook her head, however, because that was hardly the point and, in truth letting on that she’d caught Joaquin’s slipup hadn’t been her smartest move. “An-n-nd that’s so not important.” Looking Finn up and down, she had to admit that, unlike her, he practically oozed competency. “I’m sure you could have handled it much better.”
To her surprise, he flashed her a wry smile and said, “Probably not. I would’ve been rattled, too, if it involved my family. So what’s the plan? You want me to go with you when you take it to the cops?”
“I can’t go to the police.”
He jerked upright. “Are you shitting me? You have to report this!”
“It’s not that I don’t want to, Finn—I literally can’t. My mother devoted an entire letter to the way Munoz bragged about his favorite cousin, who’s in the Policía Nacional de El Tigre.” She could have added that 99 percent of her mother’s correspondence had to do with her and Brian’s ministry and their impatience and frustration with anything that interfered with it. But she didn’t, of course, because, truly, why should Finn Kavanagh care about her dysfunctional family relationships?
Still, it cheered her up to a surprising degree when he strung an impressive number of truly obscene words together, even though she knew it was in response to her comment, not her situation.
“My thoughts precisely,” she agreed. Looking past him, she tried to see into the gondolas behind them to determine which one Joaquin had caught. It was a fruitless endeavor, however; she could see nothing more than shadows. So she pulled a big, brilliantly colored scarf out of her voluminous tote and turned her attention back to Finn.
“Look, I’m sorry I dragged you into my mess,” she said, taking her hair out of the tight French twist she’d worn, with its fanned tail ratted and brushed forward to give her a short-haired punk/goth look. Finger-combing it until she could gather it all in one hand, she then tied it into a loose knot atop her head. “I’ve got a car down in the valley, so when we get to the station after next I’m going to do my best to bail without Joaquin seeing me. I honestly don’t believe he’ll be expecting me to get off this soon, since a smart person would choose the main station, where
